Obamaworld full of lies

President Obama’s transparent mendacity about his responsibility for the sequester is revealing. The obtuse Chuck Todd doesn’t think it’s a story; he characterizes it as a traditionally sterile argument about who is to blame for the unpleasantness (which is the way the New York Times treats the issue it when it deigns to touch it). Todd can’t be that stupid, can he?

True, it would be nice to know how we got here. Thanks to Bob Woodward — the establishment reporter at DC’s establishment newspaper — we know definitively how we got here. No thanks to Chuck Todd. At NRO, Deroy Murdock revisits the scene of the crime.

So we know that when Obama disclaims responsibility for the sequester and imputes it to Republicans, as he has repeatedly done, he is lying. Chuck Todd to the contrary notwithstanding, that’s a story all by itself, or so it would have been thought in ages past.

What can we learn from the story beyond the details in question? Off the top of my head I can think of a few other conclusions to be drawn from the facts. Obama is a shameless liar for petty partisan purposes. A shameless liar for petty partisan purposes is a man of bad character. Obama’s mendacity exposes him as a man of bad character, or so it would have been thought in ages past.

Obama’s lies permeate his attacks on the Republican Party. They are part and parcel of the permanent campaign. The campaign is a parade of lies marshaled in a malevolent partisan cause. That’s a story too.

The shamelessness of Obama’s prevarication in part reflects Obama’s character but it also reflects his judgment that he won’t be called on his lies by Woodward’s colleagues in the mainstream media. He has undertaken to wage a campaign of lies already knowing that Woodward had put the true story on the record in the book he published this past September.

So Obama’s campaign is predicated on the judgment that Woodward’s colleagues in the mainstream media will do nothing to disturb the party line. Although Obama is a man of poor character, he has a good bead on the character of the journalists who are paid to cover him for a living. His judgment is that they will cover for him rather than cover him, and in this judgment he is right on the mark.